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(45) But that I now write, that the Stars rule in all Beasts, and other Creatures; and that every Creature received the Spirit of the Stars in the Creation, and that all Things still stand in the same Regimen; this the Simple will hardly believe, though the Doctor knows it well, and therefore we direct them to Experience. Behold, a Male and Female beget young Ones, and that often; now they come forth out of one only Body, and yet are not of one Kind, [nor of the same] Colour and Virtue, nor [shape or] Form of Body. All this is caused by the Alteration of the Stars; for when the Seed is sown, the Carver makes an image according to his Pleasure; yet according to the first Essence, he cannot alter that; but he gives the Spirit in the Essence to it according to his Power, [or Ability or Dominion,] as also Manners, and Senses, Colour and Gesture like himself, to be as he is, and as the Constellation is in its Essence at that Time, (when the [Creature] draws Breath) [first in its Mother's body,] whether [the Essence] be in Evil or in Good, [inclined] to Biting, Worrying and Striking, or to Meekness, [or loving Kindness and Gentleness;] all as the Heaven is at that Time, so will also the Spirit and the Beast be.

(5) So the Matter of this World, as also the Stars and Elements, must not be looked upon, as if God was not therein. His Eternal Wisdom and Virtue [or Power] has formed itself with the Fiat in all Things, and he Himself is the Master- Workman; and all Things went forth in the Fiat, every Thing in its own Essence, Virtue and Property. For as every Star in the Firmament has a Property different from the other; thus is it with the Mother also, out of which the fifth Essence of the Stars went forth. For when the fiery Form of the Stars was separated from her, she was not presently severed from the first eternal Birth-Right, but she kept her first eternal Virtue. Only the rising Power of the Fire is severed from her, so that she is become a pleasant Refreshment, and a kind Mother to her Children.

(14) We have a very powerful Testimony hereof, and it is known in Nature, and in all her Children, in the Stars and Elements, in the Earth, Stones, and Metals; especially in the living Creatures, as you see, how they are evil and good, viz. lovely Creatures, and also venomous evil Beasts; as Toads, Adders, and Serpents, [or Worms;] so also there is Poison and Malice in every Sort of kLife of the third Principle: And the [Fierceness] or Strength must be in Nature, or else all were a Death and a Nothing. The Depth in the Center.

(5) For it cannot be said that Fire, Bitterness, or Harshness, is in God, much less that Air, Water, and Earth are in him; only it is plain that all Things have proceeded out of that [Original.] Neither can it be said, that Death, Hell-fire, or Sorrowfulness is in God, but it is known that these Things have come out of that [Original.] For God has made no Devil out of himself, but Angels to live in Joy, to their Comfort and Rejoicing; yet it is seen that Devils came to be, and that they became God's Enemies. Therefore the Source or Fountain of the Cause must be sought, vis. what is the Prima Materia, or first Matter of Evil, and that in the Originality of God as well as in the Creatures; for it is all but one only Thing in the Origin: All is out of God, made out of his Essence, according to the Trinity, as he is one in Essence and threefold in Persons.

(25) Now thus the eternal Light, and the Virtue of the Light, or the heavenly Paradise, moves in the eternal Darkness; and the Darkness cannot comprehend the Light; for they are two several Principles; and the Darkness longs after the Light, because that the Spirit beholds itself therein, and because the divine Virtue is manifested in it. But though it has not comprehended the divine Virtue and Light, yet it has continually with great Lust lifted up itself towards it, till it has kindled the Root of the Fire in itself, from the Beams of the Light of God; and there arose the third Principle: And it has its Original out of the first Principle, out of the dark Matrix, by the Speculating of the Virtue for Power] of God. But when the kindled Virtue in this springing up [of the third Principle] in the Darkness became fiery, then God put the Fiat therein, and by the moving Spirit, which goes forth in the Virtue of the Light, created the fiery Source in a bodily Manner, and severed it from the Matrix, and the Spirit called the fiery created Properties Stars, for their Quality.

(29) For the Stars themselves are senseless, and have no Knowledge or Perception, yet their soft Operation in the Water makes a seething, flowing forth, or boiling up one of another, and in the Tincture of the Blood, they cause a Rising, Seeing, Feeling, Hearing, and Tasting. Therefore consider from whence the Tincture proceeds, wherein the noble Life springs up, that thus becomes sweet from Harshness, Bitterness, and Fire, and you shall certainly find no other Cause of it than the Light: But whence comes the Light, that it can shine in a dark Body? If you say it comes from the Light of the Sun. Then what shines in the Night, and enlightens your Senses and Understanding so, that though your Eyes are shut, you perceive and know what you do? Here you will say, the noble Mind leads you, and it is true. But whence has the Mind its Original? You will say, the Senses make the Mind stirring; and that is also true. But whence come they both? What is their Birth or Off- spring? Why is it not so with the Beasts?

(5) But this is the Ground; every Quality [or Source,] would be creaturely, and the fiery [Property] elevated itself too mightily, into which Lucifer had brought his Will; and so it went with Adam as to the tempting Tree, as it is written; and God suffered all Sorts of Trees to spring up in the Garden of Eden; and in the Midst of the Garden the Tree of Life, and of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

(43) Now God said, Let all Manner of Beasts come forth, every one after its Kind; and so there came forth out of the Essence of every one's kind, a Male and Female. And thus the Spirit of the Stars, or the Spirit of the Form of Fire, had now by its Longing copulated with the watery [Spirit,] and two Sexes sprung out of one Essence; the one according to the Limbus in the Form of Fire, and the other according to. the Aquaster [or Spirit of the Water] in the watery Form; yet so [blended or] mixed, that they were alike as to the Body. And so the Male was qualified according to the Limbus, or Form of Fire, and the Female according to the Aquaster in the watery Form.

(26) And though it be clear that the Stars in the outward Birth [Geniture or Operation] alter the Essences in every one according to their Source [Quality, Influence, or Property,] yet the Element is still there, and they cannot alter that with their Power, except Man himself does it; they have only the outward Region; and besides, the Devil dares not 1 image [or imprint] himself, before the Time of the Understanding, when Man can incline himself to the Evil or to the Good. Yet none must presume upon this [Impotency of the Devil, and four Elements,] for if the Parents be wicked, God can well forsake a wicked Seed. For he willeth not that the Pearl should be cast before Swine; although he is very inclined to help all Men, yet it is [effectual] but for those that turn to him; and although the Child is in Innocence, yet the Seed is not in Innocence; and therefore it has Need of the Treader upon the Serpent [or Saviour.] Therefore, ye Parents, consider what ye do; especially you Knaves and Whores; you have a hard Lesson [to learn] here, consider it well, it is no jesting Matter, it shall be shown you in its Place, that the Heaven thunders, [and passes away with a Noise.] Truly the Time of the Rose brings it forth, and it is high Time to awake, for the Sleep is at an End, there shall a great Rent be before the Lily; therefore let every one take Heed to his Ways.

(6) But in fact everything follows its own Kind; the birth is a horse because it comes from the Horse Kind, a man by springing from the Human Kind; offspring answers to species. Allow the kosmic circuit its part, a very powerful influence upon the thing brought into being: allow the stars a wide material action upon the bodily part of the man, producing heat and cold and their natural resultants in the physical constitution; still does such action explain character, vocation and especially all that seems quite independent of material elements, a man taking to letters, to geometry, to gambling, and becoming an originator in any of these pursuits? And can we imagine the stars, divine beings, bestowing wickedness? And what of a doctrine that makes them wreak vengeance, as for a wrong, because they are in their decline or are being carried to a position beneath the earth- as if a decline from our point of view brought any change to themselves, as if they ever ceased to traverse the heavenly spheres and to make the same figure around the earth.

Nor may we think that these divine beings lose or gain in goodness as they see this one or another of the company in various aspects, and that in their happier position they are benignant to us and, less pleasantly situated, turn maleficent. We can but believe that their circuit is for the protection of the entirety of things while they furnish the incidental service of being letters on which the augur, acquainted with that alphabet, may look and read the future from their pattern- arriving at the thing signified by such analogies as that a soaring bird tells of some lofty event.

(19) And thus he dwells in two [Properties,] both which draw him, and desire to have him; viz. one fierce [Property,] or Source, whose Original is the Darkness of the Abyss; and the other is the divine [Power or] Virtue, whose Source [or active Property] is the Light and the divine Joy in the broken Gate of Heaven; as the Word Himmel [Heaven] in the Language of Nature has its proper acute Understanding, from the Pressing through, and Entering in, and then with its Root continuing to fit in the Stock of Eternity, wherein the Omnipotence is rightly understood; which my Master in Arts will scarce give any Credit to, for he has no Knowledge therein; it belongs to the Lily.

(1) WE find by the divine Providence in all Things, as also in Arts and States, that the Things of this World are all good and profitable, and that only the Devil's Poison brought into them is evil; and so we find also all States [or Conditions,] high and low, come out of one i only Tree, and one always proceeds out of the other, so that the divine Providence comes to help all Things, and so the eternal Wonders (in all the three Principles) are manifested; to which End God brought to Light the Creation of all Things, which from Eternity in themselves stood only in the [Flowing, Budding, or] Springing up, but by the Creation of this World are put into the Wonders.

(30) But, to speak briefly, the Good is from the one and the whole Cause, but the Evil is from many and partial defects. Almighty God knows the Evil qua good; and, with Him, the causes of the evils are powers producing good. But, if the Evil is eternal, and creates, and has power, and is, and does, whence do these come to it? Is it either from the Good, or by the Good from the Evil, or by both from another cause? Everything that is according to nature comes into being from a defined cause. And if the Evil is without cause, and undefined, it is not according to nature. For there is not in nature what is contrary to nature; nor is there any raison d' etre for want of art in art. Is then the soul cause of things evil, as fire of burning, and does it fill everything that it happens to touch with baseness? Or, is the nature of the soul then good, but, by its energies, exists sometimes in one condition, and sometimes in another? If indeed by nature, even its existence is an evil, and whence then does it derive its existence? Or, is it from the good Cause creative of the whole universe? But, if from this, how is it essentially evil? For good are all things born of this. But if by energies, neither is this invariable, and if not, whence are the virtues? Since it (the soul) comes into being without even seeming good. It remains then that the Evil is a weakness and a falling short of the Good.

(5) When they tell us that a certain cold star is more benevolent to us in proportion as it is further away, they clearly make its harmful influence depend upon the coldness of its nature; and yet it ought to be beneficent to us when it is in the opposed Zodiacal figures.

When the cold planet, we are told, is in opposition to the cold, both become meanacing: but the natural effect would be a compromise.

And we are asked to believe that one of them is happy by day and grows kindly under the warmth, while another, of a fiery nature, is most cheerful by night- as if it were not always day to them, light to them, and as if the first one could be darkened by night at that great distance above the earth's shadow.

Then there is the notion that the moon, in conjunction with a certain star, is softened at her full but is malignant in the same conjunction when her light has waned; yet, if anything of this order could be admitted, the very opposite would be the case. For when she is full to us she must be dark on the further hemisphere, that is to that star which stands above her; and when dark to us she is full to that other star, upon which only then, on the contrary, does she look with her light. To the moon itself, in fact, it can make no difference in what aspect she stands, for she is always lit on the upper or on the under half: to the other star, the warmth from the moon, of which they speak, might make a difference; but that warmth would reach it precisely when the moon is without light to us; at its darkest to us it is full to that other, and therefore beneficent. The darkness of the moon to us is of moment to the earth, but brings no trouble to the planet above. That planet, it is alleged, can give no help on account of its remoteness and therefore seems less well disposed; but the moon at its full suffices to the lower realm so that the distance of the other is of no importance. When the moon, though dark to us, is in aspect with the Fiery Star she is held to be favourable: the reason alleged is that the force of Mars is all-sufficient since it contains more fire than it needs.

The truth is that while the material emanations from the living beings of the heavenly system are of various degrees of warmth- planet differing from planet in this respect- no cold comes from them: the nature of the space in which they have their being is voucher for that.

The star known as Jupiter includes a due measure of fire , in this resembling the Morning-star and therefore seeming to be in alliance with it. In aspect with what is known as the Fiery Star, Jupiter is beneficent by virtue of the mixing of influences: in aspect with Saturn unfriendly by dint of distance. Mercury, it would seem, is indifferent whatever stars it be in aspect with; for it adopts any and every character.

But all the stars are serviceable to the Universe, and therefore can stand to each other only as the service of the Universe demands, in a harmony like that observed in the members of any one animal form. They exist essentially for the purpose of the Universe, just as the gall exists for the purposes of the body as a whole not less than for its own immediate function: it is to be the inciter of the animal spirits but without allowing the entire organism and its own especial region to run riot. Some such balance of function was indispensable in the All- bitter with sweet. There must be differentiation- eyes and so forth- but all the members will be in sympathy with the entire animal frame to which they belong. Only so can there be a unity and a total harmony.

And in such a total, analogy will make every part a Sign.

(30) As has been often mentioned, God is the Essence of all Essences, wherein there are two Essences in one, without End, and without Original; viz. the eternal Light, that is, God, or the Good; and then the eternal Darkness, that is, the Source; and yet there would be no Source in it if the Light was not. The Light causes that the Darkness longs after [or is in Anguish for] the Light, and this Anguish is the Source of the Wrath of God (or the hellish Fire) wherein the Devils dwell: From whence God also calls himself an angry, zealous [or jealous] God. These are the two Principals, the Original of which we know nothing of, only we know the Birth therein, the indissoluble Band, which is as follows.

(31) The Cause of things good is One. If the Evil is contrary to the Good, the many causes of the Evil, certainly those productive of things evil, are not principles and powers, but want of power, and want of strength, and a mixing of things dissimilar without proportion. Neither are things evil unmoved, and always in the same condition, but endless and undefined, and borne along in different things, and those endless. The Good will be beginning and end of all, even things evil, for, for the sake of the Good, are all things, both those that are good, and those that are contrary. For we do even these as desiring the Good (for no one does what he does with a view to the Evil), wherefore the Evil has not a subsistence, but a parasitical subsistence, coming into being for the sake of the Good, and not of itself.

(8) For as the Soul of Man moves and swims between the Virtue of the Stars and Elements, so the created Heaven also moves between Paradise and the Kingdom of Hell, and it swims in the eternal Matrix; its Limit reaches as far as the Ethera [Skies or Receptacle] has yielded itself up to the Creation, so far as the Kingdom of Lucifer did reach, where yet no End is to be found: For the Virtue or Power of God is without End, but our Sense reaches only to the fiery Heaven of the Stars, which are a Propagation in the fifth Form of the eternal Mother, (or third Principle, (or in the Beginning of this World,) the Virtue or Power of the Matrix was separated, where now the Separation is thus moved: And then every Essence in the Propagation, in the manifold Centers of the Stars, have a longing Desire one after the other, and a continual Will to infect, [impregnate, or mix Influences;] and the one Essence, or Virtue, is the oMeat and Drink, as also the Chest [Case, or Receptacle] of the other. Or Outbirth, or Offspring.

(46) Hereupon now the Spirit of the Stars and Elements would continually [get] again into the Element; for in the Element there is Meekness and Rest; and in the Kindling thereof there is mere Enmity and contrary Will, and the Devil rules also therein; and they would fain be released from that abominable and evil Guest, and they seek with great Anxiety after Deliverance, as Paul says; All Creatures groan together with us, to be freed from Vanity.

(33) Thus on the fourth Day, by the Fiat, out of the Virtue, he prepared the Similitude of his Substance [and fitted it] to be a Matrix, which should generate all whatsoever was a Similitude of his Substance, and of the Wisdom which was in him from Eternity; that so all Forms might be brought forth and become visible, which were from Eternity in the Matrix. And the Similitude of the unsearchable manifold Varieties and Virtues are the Stars, which altogether give [or send] their Virtue into the Matrix of the Heaven, and the Heaven gives that same Spirit to the Creatures. This is the course of all Creatures after the same Essence, [or Substance,] and they are formed after the same Spirit, which is their Virtue, Spirit, and Life.